Journal
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
Volume 11, Issue 5, Pages 442-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01026-5
Keywords
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Funding
- NASA Land Use and Land Cover Change programme [NNX14AD78G]
- Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) - US National Science Foundation [CRN3076, GEO-1128040]
- NSF EPSCoR project [IIA-1301789]
- NASA's GeoCarb Mission (GeoCarb) [80LARC17C0001]
- SMOS project of the TOSCA Programme from CNES, France (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales)
- RECCAP2 project, ESA Climate Change Initiative [4000123002/18/I-NB]
- H2020 European Institute of Innovation and Technology [821003]
- Newton Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil (CSSP Brazil)
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [947757]
- DFF Sapere Aude grant [9064-00049B]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41801247, 41830648]
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [BK20180806]
- China Scholarship Council [201804910838]
- Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDA20010202]
- European Research Council (ERC) [947757] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon was higher in 2019 than in 2015, potentially due to loosened forest protection policies. Despite this, the net AGB loss in 2019 was three times smaller than in 2015, with forest degradation contributing three times more to the total AGB loss than deforestation.
Carbon loss from forests occurs through deforestation or the degradation of existing forest. The loss of forest area in the Brazilian Amazon was higher in 2019 than following drought and an El Nino event in 2015, yet degradation drove three times more biomass loss than deforestation from 2010 to 2019. Spatial-temporal dynamics of aboveground biomass (AGB) and forest area affect the carbon cycle, climate and biodiversity in the Brazilian Amazon. Here we investigate interannual changes in AGB and forest area by analysing satellite-based annual AGB and forest area datasets. We found that the gross forest area loss was larger in 2019 than in 2015, possibly due to recent loosening of forest protection policies. However, the net AGB loss was three times smaller in 2019 than in 2015. During 2010-2019, the Brazilian Amazon had a cumulative gross loss of 4.45 Pg C against a gross gain of 3.78 Pg C, resulting in a net AGB loss of 0.67 Pg C. Forest degradation (73%) contributed three times more to the gross AGB loss than deforestation (27%), given that the areal extent of degradation exceeds that of deforestation. This indicates that forest degradation has become the largest process driving carbon loss and should become a higher policy priority.
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